Digital Disturbance: Desura Owner Files For Bankruptcy

Following troubles and discontent with developers being paid late by Desura, the digital distribution store’s owner Bad Juju Games have filed for bankruptcy. A member of Bad Juju confirmed the bankruptcy filing with us today, but the company haven’t made a statement yet or said anything about what’ll happen with people owed money or games folks have bought or whether the store will continue, or… anything. More will follow, I’m sure.

Bad Juju bought Desura from Second Life developers Linden Labs in November 2014. Shortly after, the first complaints about late payments began to surface. This all came to a head in late May, when Desura finally responded publicly. They blamed their tardiness on lacking an automated payment system, and did say they were starting getting manual payments rolling again while they worked on an automated system. Pretty big thing to lack, that, and not the fault of the developers who were being paid late.

Evidently greater problems were afoot. Whether any money at all will go to developers over the course of the bankruptcy proceedings remains to be seen. More on this as we know it.

If you’re a developer now looking for a new place to sell your games, I’d recommend at least taking a look at Itch.io and the Humble Store with its widget.